And more than once I heard her regretting that she had ever taken on the task of building a school.
‘Please understand,’ the doctor would try and convince her, ‘if you build a school and generally do good deeds, it’s not for the peasants, but in the interests of culture, it’s for the future. And the worse the peasants are, the more reason there is for building a school. Please understand that!’
But there was no conviction in his voice and it struck me that he detested the peasants as much as Masha did.
Masha often went to the mill with my sister and they would both laugh and say that they were going to look at Stefan because he was so handsome. As it turned out, Stefan was taciturn and slow on the uptake only with men; with women he was free and easy and could never stop talking. Once, when I went down to the river for a swim I happened to overhear them. Masha and Cleopatra, in white dresses, were sitting on the river bank in the broad shade of a willow, while Stefan stood nearby with his hands behind his back.
‘D’ye think them peasants is human beings?’ he asked. ‘No, they’re not. Begging your pardons, they’re wild animals, crooks. What kind of life does a peasant lead? Drinking and eating the cheapest stuff he can get and bawling his head off in the pub. And he can’t talk proper, can’t be’ave, no manners. He’s an ignorant oaf! He wallows in muck, so’s his wife, so’s his children. He sleeps in his clothes, picks spuds out of the soup with ’is fingers, drinks kvass with black beetles an’ all – don’t ever trouble his self to blow’em away!’
‘But he’s so dreadfully poor!’ my sister interrupted.
‘What d’ye mean poor! He’s just not well-off; there’s all kinds of not being well-off, lady. If someone’s in jail, or blind, or hasn’t got no legs, you wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But if he’s free, has’ is wits about him, has eyes and hands, faith in God, what more does he need? It’s just pampering hisself, lady. It’s ignorance but it ain’t poverty. Supposing you honest folk with your fine education tried to help him, out of pity. Why, he’s so low he’ll spend all the money on drink. Even worse, he’ll open a pub’ is self and use your money to cheat his own people with. You mentioned poverty. But does a rich peasant live any better? Begging your pardons, he lives like a pig too. He’s a bully, a loudmouth, a blockhead, broader than he’s long, with a fat red mug. I’d like to take a swing and bash the bastard’s face in. That old Larion from Dubechnya, he’s got money, but I’ll bet he’s as good at stripping the trees in your forest as the poor ones. And he’s got a foul mouth, and his children. And as soon as’ e’s had a drop too much he’ll flop face first into a puddle and fall asleep. They’re not worth a light, lady. It’s hell living in the same village as them. I’m sick and tired of the village and I thank the Lord above I’ve enough to eat. I’ve got clothes, I’ve served my time in the dragoons, was a village elder for three years and now I’m a free man. I live where I like. I don’t want to live in the village and no one can force me. Folk tells me I’ve a wife, that it’s my duty to live in a cottage with my wife. But why? I wasn’t taken on as a servant.’
‘Tell me, Stefan, did you marry for love?’ Masha asked.
‘What love can there be in a village?’ Stefan replied, smiling. ‘If you’d really like to know, lady, it’s my second marriage. I’m not from Kurilovka, but Zalegoshch.9 I settled in Kurilovka when I got married. I mean to say, my father didn’t want to divide the land between us – and there was five of us brothers. So I says my goodbyes and off I goes to a strange village, to my wife’s family. But my first wife died young.’
‘From what?’
‘From being stupid. She used to cry, keep on and on for no reason at all and so she wasted away. She kept drinking herbs to make herself look prettier and it must have damaged her insides. My second wife, the one from Kurilovka – what’s special about her? She’s a village woman, a peasant, that’s all. I felt drawn towards her when the match was being made, and thought she was young, all nice and pure-looking, and it was a clean-living family. Her mother was a Khlyst,10 drank coffee. Most important, she lived cleanly. So I got married then, and the very next day, when we was sitting down to eat, I asked my mother-in-law for a spoon. She gave me one, but I saw her wiping it with her finger. Well, now, I thought to myself, that’s how clean you are! I lived with them for a year and then I left. Per’aps I should have married a town girl,’ he went on after a pause. ‘They say a wife is a helpmate to her husband. What do I need a helpmate for? I can help myself. And I’d like you to speak nice and sensibly to me, not all that posh talk. Nice and proper, with feeling. What’s life without a good natter!’
Stefan suddenly fell silent and immediately I heard his dull, monotonous humming. That meant he had spotted me.
Masha often went to the mill and she enjoyed talking to Stefan. She liked his company, because he seemed so genuine, so convincing when he cursed those peasants. Whenever she returned from the mill the village idiot who kept watch over the orchard would shout, ‘Hey, girl! Hullo, girlie!’ And he would bark at her like a dog.
She would stop and look at him closely, as if she had found an answer to her thoughts in that idiot’s barking. Most probably it had the same fascination as Stefan’s swearing. Some unpleasant news was always waiting for her at home – for example, the village geese had flattened the cabbages in our garden, or Larion had stolen the reins. Smiling and shrugging her shoulders, she would say, ‘But what do you expect from such people!?’
She would become highly indignant and things really were beginning to boil up inside her. But I grew used to the peasants and felt drawn more and more to them. They were mostly very nervy, irritable, downtrodden people. They were people whose imagination had been crushed, they were ignorant, with a limited, dull range of interests and were forever thinking about grey soil, grey days, black bread. They were people who tried to be cunning but, like birds, thought that they could get away with hiding only their heads behind a tree. They couldn’t count. Twenty roubles would not tempt them to come and help you in the haymaking, but they would turn up for half a barrel of vodka, although the twenty roubles could have bought them four. And there was in fact filth, drunkenness, stupidity and cheating. But for all this, I had the feeling that, on the whole, peasant life had firm, sound foundations. Yes, the peasant did resemble some great clumsy beast as he followed his wooden plough; he did stupefy himself with vodka. But when one took a closer look, he seemed to possess something vital and highly important, something that Masha, for example, and the doctor lacked. What I’m talking about is his belief that truth is the chief thing on earth and that he and the whole nation can be saved only by the truth. Therefore he loves justice more than anything in the world. I used to tell my wife that she couldn’t see the glass for the stains on the window-pane. She would either not reply or would hum like Stefan. Whenever that kind, clever woman turned pale with indignation and spoke to the doctor with trembling voice about drunkenness and cheating, she amazed me with the shortness of her memory. How could she forget that her father, the engineer, also drank – drank a great deal – and that the money with which he had bought Dubechnya came from a whole series of brazen, shameless swindles? How could she forget that?
XIV
My sister lived a life of her own too, which she took great pains to hide from me. She and Masha had frequent whispering sessions. Whenever I went up to her she would shrink back and her eyes would take on a guilty, pleading look. Clearly something she feared or was ashamed of was preying on her mind. To avoid meeting me in the garden or being left alone with me she kept close to Masha the whole time. It was only rarely – during dinner – that I had the chance to speak to her.
One evening I was quietly walking through the garden on my way home from the building-site. It had already begun to grow dark. Without noticing me or hearing my footsteps there was my sister, as quiet as a ghost, near an old wide-spreading apple tree. She was dressed in black and was hurrying backwards and forwards in a straight line, always looking at the
ground. An apple fell from a tree. She started at the noise, stopped and pressed her hands to her temples. At that moment I went over to her.
A feeling of tender love rushed to my heart as I tearfully held her shoulders and kissed her. For some reason our mother, our childhood, came to mind. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘You’re miserable. I’ve noticed that for a long time now. Tell me, what’s wrong?’
‘I’m frightened…’ she said, trembling.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked again. ‘For God’s sake, you can be frank with me!’
‘I will be frank, I’ll tell you the whole truth. It’s so hard, it’s agony hiding things from you! Misail, I’m in love,’ she went on in a whisper. ‘I’m in love, in love… I’m happy, but why am I so frightened?’
We heard footsteps and Dr Blagovo, in a silk shirt and top boots, appeared among the trees. Obviously they had a rendezvous, here by the apple tree. The moment she saw him she dashed impulsively over to him with a pained cry, as if he were being taken away from her.
‘Vladimir! Vladimir!’
She pressed close to him and hungrily gazed into his eyes. Only then did I notice how thin and pale she had grown recently. This was especially noticeable from that long-familiar lace collar, which now hung more loosely than ever around her long, thin neck. The doctor was taken aback, but quickly recovered, stroked her hair and said, ‘Now, now, it’s all right. Why are you so nervous? I’m here now, you see.’
We said nothing and sheepishly eyed one another. Then the three of us went off and I heard the doctor telling me, ‘Cultural life hasn’t begun yet in this country. The old console themselves – even if nothing is happening at the moment, things were happening in the forties and sixties, they say. But these are old men, and you and I are young, our brains aren’t afflicted yet with senile decay, therefore we cannot comfort ourselves with such illusions. Russia began in the year AD 862,11 but civilized Russia, as I understand it, hasn’t started yet.’
But I didn’t attempt to follow these ideas of his. It was all rather strange. I didn’t want to believe that my sister was in love, that here she was walking along arm-in-arm with a stranger, giving him fond looks. My own sister, that neurotic, downtrodden, enslaved creature, loved a married man with children! Something made me feel sorry, but I couldn’t pinpoint it. I found the doctor’s company somewhat disagreeable, and I had no idea what would become of this love of theirs.
XV
Masha and I drove to Kurilovka for the opening of the school.
‘Autumn, autumn, autumn,’ Masha said softly as she looked around. ‘Summer has passed. The birds have gone, only the willows are green.’
Yes, summer was over. Bright, warm days had set in, but the mornings were chilly, shepherds were wearing their sheepskin coats now and the dew stayed all day on the asters in the garden. We kept hearing plaintive sounds and we couldn’t tell if they were shutters groaning on rusty hinges or if the cranes were flying. It made one feel so good, so full of life!
‘Summer has passed,’ Masha said. ‘Now you and I can take stock. We’ve worked a lot, thought a lot, and we are all the better for it and should feel proud of ourselves. We’ve improved our own lives, but has our success had any visible effect on the lives around us? Has it been of use to anyone? No. Ignorance, personal filthiness, drunkenness, a shockingly high infant mortality rate – everything’s just as it ever was. All your ploughing and sowing, my spending money and reading books – this hasn’t made anyone’s life better. We’ve worked, indulged in lofty thinking for ourselves alone – that’s for sure.’
This kind of argument baffled me and I didn’t know what to think.
‘We’ve been sincere from start to finish,’ I said, ‘and sincere people have right on their side.’
‘I don’t deny it. We were right in our thinking but wrong in the way we set about things. It was mostly our methods that were wrong, weren’t they? You want to be useful to people, but the mere fact of buying an estate rules out any possibility of helping them from the start. What’s more, if you work, dress and eat like a peasant, you lend your authority and approval to their heavy clumsy clothes, their dreadful huts and stupid beards. On the other hand, let’s suppose you work for a very long time – all your life – so that in the end you achieve some practical results. But what do these amount to? What good are they against elemental forces, such as wholesale ignorance, hunger, cold, degeneracy? They’re a mere drop in the ocean! To counter those things you need a different line of attack, one that is powerful, bold, speedy! If you really do want to be useful, then you must abandon your narrow sphere of activity and act directly on the masses! Above all you need noisy, vigorous propaganda. Why is art – music, for example – really so alive, so popular, so powerful? Because the musician or singer influences thousands at the same time. Dear, wonderful art!’ she went on, dreamily gazing at the sky. ‘Art gives you wings and carries you far, far away! For those who are tired of filth, petty trifling concerns, for those who are confused, outraged, indignant, there is peace and satisfaction only in beauty.’
When we drove towards Kurilovka the weather was bright and joyful. In the farmyards, here and there, they were threshing and there was a smell of rye-straw. Behind some wattle fences was a bright red mountain ash, and wherever one looked every tree was golden or red. The church bells were ringing and icons were being carried to the school. I could hear them singing ‘Holy Virgin, Intercessor’.12 And how clear the air was, how high the pigeons were flying!
The service was held in a classroom. Then the peasants from Kurilovka presented Masha with an icon and those from Dubechnya brought her a large pretzel and a gilt saltcellar. Masha began to sob.
‘If we’ve said something out of turn or been a nuisance, please forgive us,’ an old man said as he bowed to us both.
On the way home Masha kept looking around at the school. The green roof that I had painted glistened in the sun and we could see it for a long time afterwards. Masha was now glancing at it in farewell.
XVI
That evening she set off for town. Recently she had been going to town often and spending the night there. When she was away I couldn’t work, my head drooped and I felt weak. Our great yard seemed like some bleak, revolting wasteland, and there were angry noises in the garden. Without Masha the house, the trees, the horses were no longer ‘ours’, as far as I was concerned.
I never left the house, but sat at Masha’s table, near the cupboard full of farming books – those old favourites that were needed no longer and which looked at me with such embarrassment. For hours on end, while it struck seven, eight, nine, while the sooty black autumn night crept up to the windows, I would examine her old glove or the pen she always used, or her little scissors. I did nothing and I understood quite clearly that everything I’d done before – ploughing, reaping, felling trees – had only been done because that was her wish. If she had sent me to clean out a deep well, where I would have had to stand waist-deep in water, I would have climbed in without asking myself if it needed cleaning or not. But now, when she was away, Dubechnya struck me as sheer chaos with its ruins, banging shutters, untidiness, and stealing twenty-four hours a day. In that kind of place any sort of work was a waste of time. And why should I work there, why all that worrying about the future, when I felt that the ground was giving way beneath me, that my role here in Dubechnya was played out – in short, when I felt that I was doomed to the same fate as those farming books? It was awful in the lonely hours of the night, when every minute I feared that someone might shout that it was time I left. It wasn’t Dubechnya that I regretted, but my own love, whose autumn had clearly arrived. What happiness, to love and be loved! And how dreadful to feel that you’re beginning to fall off that lofty tower!
Masha returned from town the following day, towards evening. Something was annoying her, but she tried to hide it and she only inquired why all the winter window-frames had been put in – it was simply stifling, she said. So I took two frames ou
t. We weren’t very hungry, but we sat down to supper all the same.
‘Go and wash your hands,’ my wife said. ‘You smell of putty.’
She had brought some new illustrated journals from town and after supper we looked at them together. There were supplements with fashion-plates and patterns. Masha just glanced at them and laid them to one side to have a proper look at later on. But one dress with a wide, smooth, bell-shaped skirt and full sleeves caught her eye and she seriously examined it for about a minute.
‘That’s not bad,’ she said.
‘Yes, it would suit you very well!’ I said. ‘Very well.’
I felt touched as I looked at the dress, admiring that grey blotch only because she liked it.
‘A wonderful, charming dress!’ I continued, tenderly. ‘My beautiful, marvellous Masha! My dear Masha!’
And my tears fell on to the fashion-plate.
‘Wonderful Masha!’ I muttered. ‘My dear, lovely, darling Masha.’
She went to bed, while I stayed up for another hour looking at the illustrations.
‘You shouldn’t have taken those window-frames out,’ she called from the bedroom. ‘I hope it won’t be cold now. Really, you can feel the draught!’
I read something in the miscellany – about how to make cheap ink and about the largest diamond in the world. And again my attention was caught by that illustration of the dress she had liked and I imagined her at a ball, with fan, bare shoulders, brilliant, splendid, knowing all about music, painting, literature. How small and brief my role in her life seemed!
Our meeting one another, our married life, were only an episode – only one of many to come in the life of this lively, richly talented woman. All the best things in this world, as I’ve already pointed out, were at her feet, they were hers for nothing. Even ideas and the latest intellectual trends were a source of pleasure for her, bringing variety to her life. I was only the cab-driver, taking her from one infatuation to the other. Now that I was no longer needed, she would fly away, leaving me alone.
The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904 Page 26